Month: May 2008

One of my favorite handguns is a 1939 National Match Colt Government Model. It is the first shootable M1911 pattern gun that I ever came across. I call a gun shootable if it throws bullets where I aim it, with high precision and little fuss. All other M1911 handguns that I fired either made too much fuss for my taste or fell short of my expectations for precision. I consider a handgun fussy if it cannot be counted upon to fire 200 rounds fast without acting up. I do not consider it precise unless it can consistently hit a silver dollar at 75 feet. My Colt can do both in style. Most of its brethren fall short in one way or another. Continue reading colt government model vs dwm luger p08

My Debt to German Learning
My first serious contact with the German learned world consisted in the reading of Kant, whom, while a student, I viewed with awed respect. Continue reading portraits from memory

And so began the great central struggle of political literature, between the powerful men and women who want their deeds recorded and the literary figures who are able to record them in a memorable way. As long as politics lasts, the politicians will feel that they deserve a better press; and the media will feel honour-bound to tease the politicians, to assert their independence and to rub the noses of the politicians in the eternal fact that it is literary folk, with their superior gifts of composition, who will always end up with the final word.
— Boris Johnson, How to live for ever, The Spectator, Saturday, 10 September 2005